Thursday, November 19, 2009

Critical Condition

It is with great reluctance and a heavy heart that I must report this.

This weekend I heard from Bin Hong, Su Beng's assistant. She told me that Su Beng is in the hospital in Tokyo. In late October Su Beng had returned to Japan to look in on his noodle shop but recently he's had some health complications.

It's his kidneys.

Bin Hong was going to fly from Taipei to Tokyo on Wednesday but moved up her travel plans to Monday.

Yesterday she told me that his condition is not stable enough for him to return to Taiwan for treatment. In order to do so they'd have to charter a plane with special medical staff and equipment, which would be quite costly, so he will remain in Japan for treatment. Though the facility he's in specializes in kidney treatment, they are making arrangements for him to be transferred to a general hospital which will be better equipped to deal with any possible complications that might occur when they do kidney dialysis on Su Beng.

In the past year Su Beng has been traveling back and forth a great deal between Taiwan and Japan- overseeing renovations on his noodle shop in Ikebukuro and trying to get the shop back up and running. There's been a great deal of financial burden, and Bin Hong is afraid that the stress of it all has taken its toll on him.

What is there to say at a time like this?

It is serious. The man is ninety-one.

Let's just hope for the best and pray that Su Beng pulls through all of this okay.

For those of you who read Chinese, this blogger has written about Su Beng's condition and posted a video about Su Beng here: http://taiwanyes.ning.com/profiles/blogs/ge-ming-dao-shi-shi-ming-lao

1 comment:

Jen said...

one of our Taipei Times reporters is writing a feature on Su Beng. Hopefully we can help raise awareness on this great man's accomplishments.

Jen